DC Comics continues to build to one of its multiple big events of the year.
Sinestro: Year of the Villain 1
Written by Mark Russell
Pencils by Yildiray Cinar
Inks by Yildiray Cinar and Julio Ferreira
Colors by Hi-Fi
The Year of the Villain story building in Justice League seems to be taking parts from the 1990s crossover Underworld Unleashed, mixing it in with some Crisis-level multiversal chaos as an evolved Lex Luthor offers villains their hearts’ desires to help tip the scales of the universe away from Justice and toward Doom.
With SINESTRO: YEAR OF THE VILLAIN, we add in a little bit more existential angst, as Luthor sends the former Green Lantern off to deal with some powerful entities on a collision course with Earth. The entities have been destroying worlds on their way, and obviously, Luthor realizes that if they destroy Earth, he’ll have no place where he can rule. In addition to dealing with the powerful entities, Sinestro gets to interact with the locals, who are relying on their god-king to save them.
It doesn’t really work out well for them.
Of course, where there is existential angst within the pages of a DC Comics story these days, Mark Russell’s name is usually attached to it. His satiric take on the world made his run on THE FLINTSTONES a classic must-read series. While this is a mostly ancillary story that probably won’t have much of an effect on the main story. I normally wouldn’t have bothered with it – there were other Year of the Villain tie-ins this week that I didn’t buy – but it was worth it because of Russell’s story.
With his SECOND COMING series moved over to another publisher and WONDER TWINS coming to an end at some point soon, I hope we can still see some more of Russell’s writing within the larger DC Universe.